Sunday, December 7, 2014

I love
you.I do.Each and every one of you.I don’t know all of the so many of you out
there all over the world that read my blog but I love you still the same?How can I possibly know that you ask?Because every time that I look to see a post
that I have written and read where all of you have read it from all over the
world I smile from head to toe and I think that I might even shine a little
bit.What else could do that than love?

You come from here at my home in the
United States, many that I know and don’t and from all over the world such as, Germany
and France, Ireland and Hungary.Russia,
the Ukraine, Iraq and Kuwait, the United Kingdom and Canada, the Philippines
and India, the Netherlands, Romania, South Korea and South Africa, Australia,
New Zealand and a great handful more.I
wish I could call reference to you all of you but after a couple of weeks BlogSpot
sadly groups you all into an area of reference, a continent rather than an actual
country.We’ve even had some very small
areas that the Gibson household wasn’t quite sure where it was and of course I
looked it up on the trusted internet like you do.

I now know where Moldova is, a beautiful
little country with lots of green and such beautiful architecture, right in the
middle of Romania and the Ukraine.I
feel like I have been all over every beautiful little section of South America
and quite frankly the rest of the world.And all of this I have done while sitting in front of my little computer
in my little bedroom googling all of you.

Yes, I think that I love you all so
very much.

During Stake Conference today our
theme was based around that first great commandment of all, “Love One Another.”And it has gotten me thinking all day.Sometimes I think it is easier to love
someone that you don’t know, like all of you who make me smile from so far
away, than the very people who we see and interact with every day.I need to change that.I need to see those people with Christ’s eyes
and with Christ’s heart instead of my own.I think if I did my heart would hurt with love inside of me it would be
so big.

I had a time where I
was asked to be of service for someone that I didn’t even know by someone that
I only knew through professional reasons.I gladly accepted the weekly obligation thrilled that Heavenly Father
had found a place for me to serve his children.Week after week I continued in this service that only took ten or
fifteen minutes out of my week once a week to do and I felt glad, but one day I
had a clarifying moment that took it to a new level for me that I had never had
before.At the last moment as I was
saying goodbye until next week to those younger members of this cute family that
I was able to help, my heart started pounding so fast that I thought it might
burst out of my chest and tears came unbidden to my eyes and for one brief second
it was as if I could feel the Savior’s love for them in my heart and His
thoughts in my head.“I love them,” He
spoke.“Thank you for loving them for me
today.”

Now, can I say that the very little,
literally only a matter of a few minutes every week that has come out of my
life, that I really have done near to nothing in helping that family, only the
slightest bit, but God did something in return by letting me feel His
love.And it’s moments like those that He
gives us, not for us to be some great help to our fellow man, though that is definitely
a very important part of it, but because He wants us to have little tastes of
the strength of His love for all of us so that we can strive one day to become just
like Him.

My nine year old Sam said to me the
other day, “Mom, do you know what my favorite part about Christmas Eve is?”

I instantly thought he would mention
our family tradition of opening all the family presents a day before most of
the rest of the world, or perhaps Papa’s house and potato soup, or even
Christmas Jammies at bed that night, but it wasn’t.

“I love that all of the kids sleep
in one room and we are all stuck together.There’s nothing better.”

Sometimes Sam drives his four bigger
sisters completely nuts, I think Steph puts up with him better than most, but
even though Sam is such a totally easy going mellow boy to get along with he is
still a boy in a houseful of girls and more times than not his teasing as all
little boys do tends to annoy them, but he’s right, each and every one of them
loves being stuck together in the same room on Christmas Eve.

Sometimes the traditions that you
put together out of necessity and in this case sanity so Santa can sneak around
without getting caught, are really the things that draw a family together and
teach them all about that Christ Like Love that Heavenly Father shows us so we
can become just like His Son someday.

So now when you go about your days
this week, whether you are out and about at work or nestled tightly at home
working your little tooshies off, remember that I love you, I do, and that most of
all Heavenly Father and His most perfect Son love you too.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Sometimes
Facebook is so sensational that I don’t even want to look.Other times you are stuck for so many hours
in the car with nothing to do that you can’t help but to thank your lucky stars
for that great invention, well…that and Pinterest.I’ve been getting tired of the share this and
share that attitude as of late, sure there actually is some blogs and some
recipes that I am so thrilled that people share, even a few of those too funny
cartoons, but mostly I would much rather see what is going on in your lives…yes
you…the people that I really love and care about not some crazy person that I
don’t know from some place that I will never visit, well unless that crazy
person is me and you don’t know me and will never visit me and somehow you have
happened across my blog and in that case, most definitely read it and certainly
share it all over Facebook.

That having
been said I did come across the most awesome share on Facebook that led to an
immediate buy and download to my Christmas playlist and I just have to share it
with you.Get passed the whole “Jimmy”
part at about the five minute mark and just listen to the song.I
loved it strangely enough!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xZ3Ezl5-Lk

So I guess
when it comes to something like that…by all means share away!

For
Thanksgiving our family did something amazing that we have done the past
several years.We’ve built up a
following after that initial Thanksgiving with Jason and Clint Robertson but
this year all usual families involved had other obligations which just left the
Gibson’s in California this year…though we did drag along my amazing mom and
Clint’s oldest and also amazing daughter Megan.Jason’s brother met us there for one of the afternoons.Can I say that it was awesome!!!!And I only missed the turkey a very little
bit.

We played so
hard in the ocean that at night I fell into bed, as pro as I am riding the
waves I was equally as pro at crashing to sleep at night.The first day was very calm and Megan and I
and Nan all saw stingrays swimming through the water.The second day both Megan and I stepped on
those stingrays to feel them slip away under our feet.Suzy and Nan were not so lucky.What are the chances that two of my girls
within an hour of each other would get stung by rays…well they did and let me
tell you they were in pain.Suzy’s pain
only climbed past her ankle, but Nan’s sting was so much deeper and sent pain
all the way to her hip.Let me tell you,
I got it about six years back and the pain you feel from the poison, well let’s
just say as tough as I am it almost brought me to tears.I was so proud of Nan though.Jason bought some solar cane (Numbing Crap)
and it didn’t work, but she knew it was her last day so she pulled herself into
the water, limping, tears running down her cheeks and all, so she didn’t have
to miss out on one more minute of the ocean.It made me realize just how strong my no longer so little girl really
is.When she was little she struggled in
school, first with being so shy that the teachers all worried about her and
then with her grades.What did she
decide to do, work her butt off and now she is my crazy, happy, so very
confident and extremely outgoing and friendly A student.What helped her decide that?What made her take that on herself?Because that is what she finally did, decided
who she was and made the changes to be that person.My once skinny armed can’t lift a jug of milk
little girl now throws around huge pro subs like they were nothing.I get Jenny being able to do that, she is
like me and naturally really muscly, but not Nan and now look at her.What drives that?

The last
several months have been insane as we, all Americans and really the rest of the
world, have waited to see what would and did transpire over the chaos and
finally the grand jury decision in Ferguson Missouri.What decided that for those people to go
crazy?Sure, what was happening around
them seemed unreal and for some unjust, but what caused them to join in and
start destroying the very town that they live in, the very people that support
them?I cannot begin to understand where
that much hate and animalism behavior comes in.It seems so against the very nature that God put in us.How does something created by light become so
dark?I’ve asked myself that over and
over and then I looked at my children, playing in the ocean or at the Aquarium
of the Deep, laughing and giggling with each other and realized that some of
what God created still is good and still is filled with light.

How do we
keep that light when so much chaos and so much insanity is going on around
us?Isaiah 5:20 20 Woe
unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that count darkness as light, and
light as darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”What do you do when so many seem to be
looking for the bitter and throwing away all that is sweet?Do we just give up and join them?Human nature seems to point that way, so why
don’t we?

We have to
decide who we are and make the changes to be that person. Not saying that is
easy to go against the sensationalism around us and not get caught up, after
all that is our nature, that is my nature, but God made me and filled me with
light and I can choose to continue to feed that light or let it burn out.I can choose to let Ferguson Missouri and
every other crazy insane wildness that continues to be the Daily News drive me
and hype me or I can find the strength that my daughter found.That quiet, sweet peace that if accessed
enough can make you something greater than you ever thought, something only The
Creator could ever have planned, but you have to decide it, I have to decide
it, and the more of us that decide it the more it will spread and before long
despite all the bitterness and all the riotness behavior catching the headlines
a sweet peace will start to creep across the world.Maybe those of us who are watching will catch
this light and maybe, just maybe if we try so hard and listen so quietly we
will be able to see it light within us too, because you see, that really is our
choice, not matter how hard it may be, no matter how crazy everything around us
may be, we ultimately decide.We decide
who we will be and we decide the kind of world we want to create and most of
all we decide if we share it with the rest of all of God’s children.It’s as simple as that…we decide.

Pics of us at the Aquarium of the Deep

Us at the Tide Pools at Little Carona Beach

Sam found a hermit crab and it crawled out of it's shell.

And finally the Hippy Bus that a very little, very old, "Surfer Dude" told us to add our stickers too.